So I’m in the underdark at the moment, everything has been a breeze so far aside from a few tough encounters, I’m having fun. I come across secret rooms every third dungeon and the only complaint is the drops and challenge rating don’t seem to be worth my time…

That was until after I beat the minotaur boss. He wasn’t much of a challenge, I immobilized him and gave him a good alpha strike. The next dungeon made me thank Ao that I had. I come across a hidden room and entered… My party immediately exploded before I got a chance to move. I was left thinking: “what the hell just happened?” I try again, I get one character to go first before the two minotaurs, same result.

So it turns out Minotaurs get a free trample attack every time they advance. They did about 2.2k each advance. I ran this room over and over until RNG blessed me with a first turn immobilize (later, I found advancing a redshirt melee character forward to take a fatal beating also worked).

So Here’s my question: is this good gameplay? I’m not going to complain about a hard fight but I wonder if 3 minotaur groups might be a little unfair given that they can blitz you with little difficulty. One thing a I will say, if the dev’s designed minotaurs to be terrifying, they ace’ed it. 10/10

Minotaur certainly are terrifying. The threat of the charge attack can really keep you on your toes, and their axe attack hits the entire row! Thankfully, they don’t have a ton of HP, so they go down fast if you can get in a few good ranged attacks. They have a high threat lv, but in a fun way.

My one suggestion to the design team would be to ensure that there’s no risk of Minotaur advancing before any of the heroes get a chance to react. At higher lvs, a Minotaur charging at your entire party can be immediately fatal. As the OP found, relying on the RNG to ensure you can prepare for/prevent the Minotaur charge is not fun, and can be quite frustrating.

My wild suggestion would be to not have Minotaur advance on the first round of combat. Instead, have them cast a buff on them-self. Taunt and/or fury would be rather thematic for them to do.

Every level with Minotaurs took me at least 10 tries, probably more. This is because you HAVE to win initiative. Bring the Warlock and immobilize them, and the bard to perhaps dominate them. if your warlock goes first, her immobilize generally lasts long enough to kill them from range. these two strategies also work with the Umber hulks that you will encounter next.